While setting up the BBQ station on the restaurant’s deck, I had the feeling of being watched. Around me the visitors to the Crocodile Zoo and Farm sat drinking coffee and juice and the front-of-house-staff were setting up for lunch. No one was looking at me, but the sense of being observed persisted. Most odd. The dining deck stuck out over a lagoon which contained several large crocodiles. These reptiles would lay on the mud banks or jump for food when a boat full of visitors passed by.
Then, just beneath my feet I heard something move — something big. Beneath the deck, a metre below me, rose the shallow mud bank of the lagoon. I knelt down, looked through the wooden slats and saw a few centimetres away from me – nothing but scales.
With growing trepidation, I crept along, looking through the gaps, and rapidly worked out that a saltwater crocodile, nearly four metres long, was right under my feet! One of the zoo’s star attractions had decided it wanted to check out what was going onto the barbie.
That lunch service was an unnerving affair to say the least, cooking hundreds of crocodile kebabs(!) while Big Daddy listened to my every move. The giant creature weighed many hundreds of kilos and could have easily busted right up through the timber-slatted floor. I asked the other chef if he could turn the BBQ gas-bottles off if this happened — I’d be on the roof.
The Saltwater or Estuarine Crocodile, has been swimming around eating things, then sleeping it off in the sun for at least 85 million years. Today this saurian is the planet’s largest terrestrial predator, with the biggest specimens found in India’s Bhitarkanika National Park. And they are big — five to six metres long, with one un-measured (I wonder why) beast possibly 7 metres long. In the northern tropics of Australia these creatures are known as ‘salties’. They are generally seen in the 1-3 metre range, though a 4.3 metre croc and 5.2 metre one have been found dead (shot illegally) in the last few years.
I’ve cooked more crocodiles than I’ve seen. That’s got nothing to do with cause and effect because crocodiles are farmed. Protected in the wild since 1974, these big lizards have become big business. In the Northern Territory alone it’s a $100 million industry. Their leather is the biggest money spinner — 13 farms in Australia provide 60% of global production with Hermes and Louis Vuitton owning several of them in North Queensland.
Croc meat is lucrative too. Very white in colour, the texture is much like what you’d expect from a big swamp lizard. It can be tough and rubbery — the tail is the best cut – and is very low in fat. With more protein than sirloin beef or chicken breast this makes for pretty healthy tucker. Problem is, it tastes rather bland and needs other flavours. Curry is good; so are Asian marinades and rich sauces. I’ve smoked it in green tea leaves, but I like is small cubes of tail, marinated, skewered and barbecued.
Like premium cuts of lamb or beef, croc meat arrives off-the-bone and vacuum packed. Its uniqueness becomes subsumed in the daily whirl of kitchen prep and service. But at the Crocodile Farm and Zoo I could appreciate the fear and awe that these prehistoric-looking beasts generate. On my break I’d go and check them out close-up. Happily stunned in the sun’s heat were some beauties; long as boats, wide as dining tables, and looking as if they could knock down trees with their massive tails.
The daily shows at the Zoo required an unusual piece of Workplace Health and Safety equipment — a shot-gun loaded with solid shot. Spotters and handlers in North Queensland croc shows have been attacked. Some suffered deep lacerations; one lost a thumb, another an arm, and in one incident the wrangler was killed by a 4.1-meter animal in front of the horrified audience.
Fortunately, nothing like this happened while I worked there but one day, I did see something a bit crazy.
I was out the back of the kitchen, where a mesh fence separated the staff carpark from a big landscaped pond. I looked through the fence and saw, as happy as Larry, a metre-long crocodile enjoying a swim. There was something not right about this. Walking parallel to the fence out into the main carpark I was pretty confident that the fence would turn at a right-angle. But no, it didn’t. It just ended. There was nothing between the croc and the car-park full of visitor’s cars.
I went and told a Zoo staff member what I’d seen. “Ah yeah,” she said in an off-hand way. “We had a bit of a break out last night, but we're onto it.” They must have as I heard no reports of people being bailed up by the little crocodile in the car park.
I’ve seen salties in the wild, usually sunbathing on a river bank, and have always been aware that every beautiful deserted beach or idyllic river potentially contains something that can turn me into croc poo. Being roughly inserted in the food-chain in this manner is possible, but unlikely, as just one Australian participates in a fatal croc attack every two years. These odds were of no real solace the day I got caught out in the vast mangrove swamp of North Queensland’s Missionary Bay.
I was working at a resort near there, and had taken a lady friend out in a 3-metre-long aluminum dingy. We cruised into the bay and went up a creek. The bay was part of a nearly 400 sq kilometer national park renowned for its big crocodiles — many bigger than our dingy. I ‘d read all those croc-attack statistics though and felt comfortable with the risk.
Then I noticed mangrove roots and mud rising up around us. The big bay was so shallow that the tide was going out incredibly fast. We raced it back along the creek out into the bay. Imagine my shock when I saw that what had looked like reasonably deep water ten minutes ago was now kilometres of mud! Being stuck in the blazing hot sun for 3 or 4 hours, like a metal bowl of food set out for giant carnivorous lizards was now looking very real. So, over the side I went.
In waist–deep mud I struggled to push the dingy towards the closest channel, praying that the escape-route wouldn’t evaporate before my eyes. My friend kept a look-out for crocodiles while I puckered up tight and pushed for dear life. It took a few fraught minutes thrashing in that warm, salty chocolate sludge but I got us into the channel and we high-tailed it out of there!